Flashback ( PDFDrive )

sure there haven’t been any concerning incidents that Empress Pernille
hasn’t shared. In the meantime it’s probably best if you don’t mention
anything about this to your family or friends. I get the impression that the
trolls would want this to be an arrangement strictly between you and them.
That . . . might be a problem, Sophie warned.
Agreed. But we’ll address that once we decide if this is even something
you should commit to.
Out loud he added, “I believe we have one more guard for you to
meet, don’t we?”
“We do,” Grady said, stomping his foot in a specific pattern against
the ground.
Sophie’s brain had just put together that he was calling the dwarf,
when the soil parted and a molelike creature with brown shaggy fur
and a pointed face poked her head out and focused on Sophie through
tightly squinted eyes.
Grady introduced them. “Sophie, meet Nubiti. You probably won’t
see her much, given her sensitivity to sunlight. But she’s only a few
stomps away if you need her.”
“We’ve developed several codes to communicate various threats,”
Sandor added. “I’ll teach you the stomping patterns later.”
Sophie nodded, turning to the dwarf, trying to think of something
better to say than “Hi.” But before she could even get that word out,
Nubiti flipped back into her hole, kicking her hairy legs and
burrowing into the earth, leaving no trace that she’d just been there.
“Bizarre creatures,” Bo murmured, raking his teeth over his lip
piercing.
“She doesn’t have much to say,” Grady explained to Sophie. “But
I’ve seen her in action on a few of my assignments with King Enki